Tags from Sunny Central

The world’s largest PV-diesel hybrid power plant with a battery storage system is currently being built in the Bolivian province of Pando. SMA has been not only selected to supply the PV inverters for this project, but also SMA’s Fuel Save Controller, which recently won the Intersolar Award in the PV category. SMA was also selected to provide four newly-developed inverters for large-scale battery storage systems using lithium-ion technology.

From June 4-6, 2014, Munich became the center of the solar industry. More than 44,000 visitors flocked to Intersolar Europe to learn more about the latest solar innovations. Follow us through 3 days of Intersolar and experience the show through the eyes of SMA. Didn’t get to make the trip over? Don’t worry, we captured the most important moments and our personal highlights for you.

The electrical grid has a fundamental need for reactive power and, in some cases, the requirement to avoid instabilities via reactive power feed-in. SMA Sunny Central CP XT inverters satisfy this requirement and make reactive power available even outside of normal feed-in periods.

Saudi Arabia is a land of superlatives. Thanks to the kingdom’s vast wealth of oil, new and impressive structures are built on a regular basis on the Arabian Peninsula situated between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. What is to become the tallest building in the world, a 1,000 meter skyscraper resembling a gigantic arrow, is currently being constructed near Jeddah. An entire subway system is planned for the desert city of Riyadh, with construction to begin in 2014.

The Long Island Solar Farm is a 32-megawatt solar photovoltaic power plant built through collaboration between entities including the Long Island Power Authority and the U.S. Department of Energy. The Long Island Solar Farm is located on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory site in Upton, New York, and began delivering power to the Long Island Power Authority grid in November 2011.50 SMA central inverters and more than 160,000 ground-mounted PV panels span an area of approximately 200 acres. At the time of completion, the Long Island Solar Farm was the largest solar photovoltaic power plant in the Eastern U.S. This plant generates up to 44,000 MWh of electricity, enough solar power to fulfill the energy needs of some 4,500 Long Island Power Authority customers. The Long Island Power Authority agreed to purchase 100 percent of the electricity the Long Island Solar Farm produces for 20 years.

SMA puts its inverters through the ringer to ready them for real-world locations. Sandstorms and enormous temperature swings are just a couple examples of the extreme conditions all components of outdoor-installed central inverters must endure. The worst imaginable weather is just one of the great risks that solar technology has to take into account because PV technology must be completely reliable and operationally secure, no matter the forecast. All components of an inverter, and especially its interior, need to be securely sealed to protect against the damaging effects brought on from desert storms and enormous temperature swings.